Alexander Lopez
Internet Connected Plant Monitor

Project Overview

Problem Statement

When I moved into my college dorm I wanted to have a few plants to make it feel more at home. As it turned out, keeping these plants watered was going to be a challenge for me. I was inexperienced with caring for plants and I nearly killed a few of my plants within a month of moving in. I needed a solution.

Solution

I figured I could make a machine to remind me or at least give me insight on when to water my plants. I built an aparatus to help me do so. The machine would be able to read water level and display it to a client on a web interface.

Moreover, the parts and skills used are as follows:

Development Process

Version 1

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The first version of the plant monitor was a proof of concept. I set up my water sensors and a NodeMCU esp8266. Then I realized that there was only a single analog sensor on the NodeMCU. The solution to this problem was to add an arduino to modulate which water sensor would be read when polled by the user. The prototype web interface is depicted as well.

Version 2

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Version two focused heavily on the user experience. The total hardware package was reduced to a single NodeMCU and one to two water sensors. The web interface was heavily reworked and the backend server technology was changed as well. This was the final variant of the Plant Monitoring system. Unfortunately, I was not able to determine if the water sensor would kill the plants if the system was actually put into use. Therefore the project was abandoned at this point. I learned a lot about web graphics and backend server code during this project and thereby I find it to be somewhat of a sucess.

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